Over the past couple of months, I've been getting a number of emails asking me about SkyOS' status. Since I didn't know anything beyond what's on the SkyOS website, and because, well, I have no affiliation with SkyOS, I couldn't really reply to these emails. However, after yet another email sent to me late last week, I decided to simply... Email Robert Szeleney, the man behind the project.

No one has access to the code so nothing can be proven. However his claims are highly suspicious given how many man-hours it takes to build a tcp/ip stack and kernel from scratch and how oddly similar his design choices are to Unix-like systems. It would be one thing if he had been working on a system like Haiku that can not easily take from FreeBSD/Linux systems but a posix compatible monokernel?

So anyways how much money did you send him Thom?

Funny how he has been suspected of GPL violations in the past yet never wanted to clear his name by open sourcing the project. What kind of IP would he be giving away here? It isn't as if there is a shortage of Unix-like monokernels.

Why not just open it so we can see his pre-emptive multitasking kernel? It would be interesting to see the kernel design decisions he made in comparison to the teams that have worked on the BSD and Linux kernels.

I'm going to build a Quake 3 like engine this weekend that just happens to work with Quake 3 mods. I'll be charging $15 for the beta so go ahead and send me your money.

However his claims are highly suspicious given how many man-hours it tak [...] FreeBSD/Linux systems but a posix compatible monokernel?

So, oh great sensei, how many kernels have you written? Where do you get all this experience from? Who made you the authority in this area? All I know is that SkyOS is a project started in the late '90s, and considering how incredibly useless, broken, and totally lacking in hardware support it has been, it is not at all impossible for him to having written this by himself - especially considering he works for a company that coded extensively with vXworks, giving him substantial access to information about hardware covered under NDAs.

So anyways how much money did you send him Thom?

More baseless accusations, but I'll bite: none. I got my beta access as a gift ages ago, because before I joined OSNews, I helped in translation and some other aspects.

Funny how he has been suspected of GPL violations in the past yet never wanted to clear his name by open sourcing the project. What kind of IP would he be giving away here? It isn't as if there is a shortage of Unix-like monokernels.

He works for a company that has access to information under NDAs - which is likely what makes it hard for him to just open source it. This is information you do not have because you have never been involved with the project. Which is fine - but it only serves to illustrate how uninformed you are.

I'm not uniformed, but I do have a better sense of software development than you which is why I was calling BULLSHIT on this project from the start while you and others were blindly following as if it was perfectly normal to add extremely complex features in short time frames that just so happen to be in other monokernel systems.

Charging for a beta should have been a red flag for even people who have no concept of how long it takes to write a tcp/ip stack from scratch. You don't PAY FOR A BETA, you're already doing the developer a favor by testing it for free. That should have spelled S-C-A-M.

Now you're making NDA excuses for him. That's great.

How dare we question someone who charges for a beta and then ditches the project in favor of iphone development. Why do you have such a soft spot for him? Maybe you're afraid of him opening the code since it might show that that me and a lot of people on Slashdot have been right all along when it comes to him stealing code. After all those of us who called it vaporware are already 1 for 2.

Try reading more carefully next time. I never said it was based on FreeBSD or Linux. He most likely lifted code from things like the scheduler and networking stack. A direct fork would be too obvious.

Funny I was also called names years ago when I told people to not support SkyOS because there were too many red flags.

Note that I never said anything remotely similar about Haiku or ReactOS. Haiku especially has a good team and I wish them the best. SkyOS however has always reeked of BS from the beginning and I'm sorry if you didn't smell anything.

So I'm really not sure what the point your trying to make here - aside trying to devalue the hard work of a fellow
developer based on nothing more than prejudice.

I don't buy his claims. He doesn't exactly have shining credibility at this point. Do you realize that the paid beta testers were promised a final version?
The reason that we decided to require a small fee is basically to cover costs and also to provide some extra funding to our project. The $30 fee is actually the same price as retail price of the SkyOS 5.0 Final release. So you can either pay $30 when SkyOS 5.0 Final is released, or you can pay it now, receive a beta copy of 5.0 to test, have access to the beta forums to get your questions answered personally, and then also have SkyOS 5.0 Final shipped to you when it is ready. You really are not paying anything extra, but you are receiving much more.http://www.techimo.com/articles/index.pl?photo=154

I called it vapor-ware, I was right, now I'm the prick for not believing that all his code was original? I'm not the one who took $30 from people with a promise of a final version.